


We Go Forward

by Draikinator



Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One), Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Death, Drugs, Gen, Guilt, Many many cw, Post-mtmte 15, Suicide, brief mentions of sex, pre-eos, selfharm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-09
Updated: 2015-05-09
Packaged: 2018-03-29 16:46:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3903565
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Draikinator/pseuds/Draikinator
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Syk feels like coming home in a world where a home is something he never had.</p>
            </blockquote>





	We Go Forward

When Drift leaves the Lost Light he stands ramrod straight and walks with heavy steps, optics high, but when he undocks and his shuttle is left alone with the endless blackness and distant white pinpricks his hands shake against the controls and his optics moisten in a way he will never admit.

He is purposeless. Drift, adrift.

Banished by the Autobots, resented by the nails, hunted by the Decepticons- despised by every other race in the galaxy.

They should have just killed him.

Two weeks later he’s on a local inhabited planet. It takes him only four hours to locate a syk dealer who will accept Shanix as payment. He goes back to the shuttle. He locks the door.

He fumbles with the cabling on the back of his head, beneath his audial plating, for a superfluous tertiary drive to jack into.

  
“ _Primus, Drift, you’ve been DRINKING it?! Syk will literally melt your intake! Here, come on, it’s way safer if you just kinda jab it into this drive here on the- yeah, you don’t even use it- it’ll put it in the nonessential lines so you don’t get internal bleeding. You gotta be more careful. Do you wanna die or something??”_

 

The moment the metal end of the booster touched the back of his head, Drift groaned, long and loud like a porn star (he had always thought he would have been good at that,but the opportunity had never arisen), because as much as he wished he hadn’t missed this he had, with every atom of his frame and every inch of his spark.

It was like coming home after a long, dark winter.

He let his optics shutter and leaned back in his seat while the familiar tizzy feeling of electricity bursting through his circuits like a low grade, unending overload ran through him helm to pede. When he finally onlined his optics again the world was fuzzy, bright, swimming with visible radiation and waves. He reached out on hand to swirl at a bit of local radiation, a colour he had no name for, and grabbed a second booster.

_“Drift- you have to stop. Three’s too much. You have a racer frame- it’s too light. The syk is too concentrated, it’ll burn straight through your tertiary lines and keep going. Please, please stop at two this time. I don’t have the resources to fix you again and I- and I don’t want to lose you. I care about you.”_

He jammed the second one in with far less ceremony, quick, emotionless, but once the syk hit his lines he arced off the chair with a static whine, his platelets shivering and his internals pulsing with far too much everything.

He settled back down, jerking and twitching, and considered popping open his panel to really take advantage of the situation, but, yech, what a way to be found.

How or why he had stayed sober so many years was a mystery- spirituality be damned, Primus had nothing on Syk.

It was really a shame he had no intention of riding it out. He reached for the third booster.

“Do you want to die?”

Drift nearly fell out of his seat whipping around at the sudden voice from behind. The colours in his optics blurred until he focused. Green, round, with sad optics and a blown open chest cavity.

Gasket.

He did fall out of this chair at this point, scrambling backward against the control pad, screaming bloody murder.

Gasket didn’t move, just kept staring at him sadly, before repeating, “Do you want to die?”

A schlew of responses races through Drift’s mind before finally, after a longer pause than he had intended, optical lubricant piddling out of the corners of his optics and staining lines down his faceplate, he said, softly, so softly he might not even have actually said it, “ _Yes_.”

At this he sagged, sliding down to the floor, trying still to hold back the self-piteous sobs he didn’t deserve, and he didn’t flinch away when Gasket sat down in front of him, legs crossed, and reached up to rub the fluid from his optics.

“I’m sorry,” Drift sobbed, “I can’t-”

“Why not?”

“I miss you,” Drift whispered, arms winding around his neck and pulling him tight, flush against him, his first hug in a long, long time, “I miss you all the time. At first I was just trying to survive and then- and then I wanted to be someone who would have made you proud- but I just ended up a monster and then I thought being an Autobot, but I- I just-” he was babbling, and he knew it, but who knew how long this hallucination would last.

Gasket squeezed him back, “You fragged up. You fragged up bad.”

“I know,” Drift choked, “I know.”

“And it’s too late to fix it.”

“I know, I know, _I know_.”

Gasket leaned back and took Drift’s face in both hands, meeting him optic to optic, “All you can do now is go forward.”

Drift gave him the most pathetic look of his life, “I want to see you again. You, and  
Wing, and, and everyone-”

Gasket’s smile didn’t falter, but it fell away from his eyes in a sad, gentle way, “You don’t believe in anything nearly as much as you want people to think you do.”

Drift sort of half sobbed, half laughed despite himself, “When was the last time you let me lie to you?”

Gasket chuckled, “Never.”

Drift let his head rest against the wall and his optics shutter, “You aren’t gonna let me kill myself, are you?”

Gasket shrugged, “Also never.”

Drift sighed and leaned back forward, holding the last booster in one hand. Gasket regarded it quietly before looking back up at Drift, “It’s just a bad trip, kid.”

“You never called me kid,” Drift sighed.

“I know,” shrugged the Gasket-shaped hallucination, “But it has a pretty positive connotation for you these days.”

Drift laughed, and held up the booster between them.

“Goodbye, Gasket.”

“Goodbye, Drift.”

Drift closed his fist, crushing the booster.


End file.
